LEARN HOW TO MUSCLE UP IN 5 STEPS

1. THE GRIP

When you grip the bar, aim to have your knuckles facing the sky. The further over the bar your hands are, the easier the transition will be. If you're hanging on your fingers, with your knuckles facing you, you'll struggle to get above the bar further down the line.

Things to avoid:- This is not a false grip. A false grip muscle up is a different movement, with a different set of progressions, which can be learnt here.

2. THE SWING

Firstly, these steps will help you get your first muscle up, not a clean, dead hang, straight body muscle up. You can tidy it up once you're comfortable with the movement and get over the bar with every attempt. Although I think it's okay to use your legs for momentum when you're learning, you MUST get both arms above the bar at the same time. Getting one arm over the bar before the other is a very hard habit to break.

Back on topic... Stand approximately 30cm from the bar and jump on to it. Catch it with the grip mentioned above and let your chest swing through your arms. As your chest swings forward, pull your legs behind you. At this stage, don't worry about pulling up; you'll need the momentum from this swing to help you get over the bar.

Things to avoid:- If you're used to performing clean pull ups, your instinct will be to kill any momentum. Try to not think of clean pull ups when you're learning to muscle up.- It's really important to pull your legs back; don't let your whole body swing forward.

3. THE PULL

Once you've got the swing down, the next step is to start pulling. After jumping to the bar and letting your chest go forward, once you start swinging backwards, PULL! This should be one movement; if there's a pause between the swing and the pull, your timing is wrong.

Unlike a pull up, at this stage, you do not want to pull your chin above the bar. Instead of trying to come up and over the bar, you want to go away from it. Don't worry about trying to get above the bar yet - just keep practising this until you've got the timing correct.

You're going to need a bit of extra momentum to help get the necessary height. When you start to pull, tuck your knees up to your chest. Similar to above, if you're used to clean pull ups, this will seem backwards, but the more you use them, the higher you'll get.

This is the hardest part of learning the muscle up because you have to get clean pull ups out of your head and get used to doing a 'muscle up pull up'. I know I keep saying this, but you can worry about taking out the leg movement and momentum at a later date.

Things to avoid:- Do not pause in between the swing and the pull. This will kill any momentum and suggests your timing is wrong.- Do not pull up towards the bar; you need to be in a position to arc around it once you get to the transition stage.- Tuck your knees all the way in to your chest. Don't just tuck them 10% of the way.

4. THE TRANSITION

The next step is getting above the bar. This is a pretty easy step if your pull up is high enough.